


Learning Curve

by Lyrstzha



Category: Firefly
Genre: Angst, Backstory, Character Study, Community: help_haiti, F/F, Female Character of Color, Female Characters, Female Protagonist, Femslash, Oral Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-27
Updated: 2010-08-27
Packaged: 2017-10-11 06:41:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/109559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lyrstzha/pseuds/Lyrstzha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This story is about the life and times of the girl who would be Saffron. There has to be a reason Saffron was staking out a place as unlikely as Triumph, and that reason is a long and winding road.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Learning Curve

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Vae](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vae/gifts).



There are whores on Sihnon, no matter what the Companions' Guild would like people to think. Sometimes people can't afford a Companion, sometimes they actually prefer the tawdriness of a whore, and sometimes they just want someone they can mark and bite and beat with impunity. It's not a good life. The Companions' Guild offers discounts to peace officers who arrest unlicensed whores, and that doesn't make things any easier.

Anise does not—and _will_ not, not _ever_—remember much about the handful of times her mother's pimp sold her out while her mother was off somewhere or passed out from too many drops. Those memories are nothing she wants back, and one day she will tell herself that she doesn't like them just because they were times when she was cheated out of the profit that should have been hers.

Years later, "Honey" Holland's daughter will recall her childhood as a kaleidoscope of loud customers, cold floors, empty bellies, and the smell of rancid protein and stale sex, but her earliest crystal clear memory will be this one: she is young, maybe six years old, and her mother carries her down an alley, the cold, blue light of dawn beginning to mix with the ever-present amber glow of Sihnon's ambient light. They stop at a heavy steel door, and Honey puts her down and hands her a small bundle wrapped up in a blanket. Anise doesn't know how to read the plaque by the door yet; it will be another couple of years before she can decipher 'Georgia Tann's Children's Home Society' from the greening brass letters.

"Here, kid. It's not much, but it's not nothing." Honey fidgets a bit, like she wants to turn away and go, but one hand fusses roughly with the smudges on Anise's face instead.

"Mama?" Anise blinks upwards, uncertain. She's not even sure what she's asking, and looking back years later, she still won't know.

"You're gonna be a looker, kid," Honey tells her. "You'll be okay." She shrugs. "It's more than my mama ever gave me."

Anise doesn't say anything to that, not even when Honey bangs on the door with one clenched fist and then turns to go. As young as she is, she has already learned that begging for scraps hurts her worse than going without.

Honey pauses at the mouth of the alley, silhouetted against the brightening sky, and glances back. Her face looks strange, but it might just be the play of shadow when she turns. "It's just," she says. "We all gotta look after ourselves in this world. You remember that, and anybody ever tells you different, they're trying to take you for a fool. You take care of _yourself_, kid." Then she rounds the corner, and she's gone.

Anise never sees her mother again. About ten years later, she will hear someone calling out "Honey" on the street—and it's probably nothing, probably just a random endearment—but she will keep walking without turning to look, just in case.

 

Maybe a year after Anise arrives at the orphanage, a sweet-faced boy is left at the back door, just like she had been herself. He's got the widest, most guileless eyes Anise has ever seen, and he's small and thin and given to catching any malady that makes the rounds. He tells the matrons that his name is Ephraim Zell, but the other kids take to calling him EZ right away, on account of how easy it is to push him around and take his things.

Anise doesn't mean to get involved. She really doesn't, because that'd be stupid. But she sits through a few weeks of watching Ephraim get his dinner taken off him when the matrons' backs are turned, while his bones stick out more and more, until it looks like the pointy edges are going to poke right through his skin.

One night, she just snaps.

"No," she says to the tormentors with a nod at Ephraim's blanket. "You wanna put that back."

"See, I don't think I do." Harlan Dawes, the biggest of the lot, squints at her consideringly. His knuckles flex slowly, savoringly.

"Well, all right. You wanna get covered in the lice eggs I put on that _sagua_'s blanket, that's your lookout, I guess."

"You...?" Harlan drops the blanket like it's on fire; they've all suffered through the misery of the matrons' aggressive and possibly punitive de-lousing before, and it's a serious threat.

Anise tosses off a casual shrug and grins at him toothily. "Thought it'd be funny," she says.

Harlan's gape shifts slowly into a mean-sounding belly laugh, and the gang behind him sniggers along. "You pick that up," he says to Ephraim. "And you wrap yourself up all snug-like, now."

Ephraim, face totally still but his indifference belied by a slight hunch in his shoulders, does as he's told.

"You got a fine sense of humor. I like that in a girl." Harlan smirks at Anise.

Anise has not mastered the fine art of simpering yet, but she makes a fair stab at it. "It's always good to be appreciated by a strong young man like you," she breathes, trying to look awed. It's shameless and kind of silly, especially since Harlan isn't old enough for anybody's definition of 'man', but he seems to like hearing it anyway.

With an appreciative nod to her, Harlan turns to go, collecting his entourage with, "Better stay pretty far away from the little _houzi de pigu_ while he's infected."

When the gang is entirely out of earshot, Anise says softly to Ephraim, "Sleep easy. There's no lice."

He freezes, gears turning visibly inside his head, but his face cannot seem to decide on an expression.

Anise turns on her heel to slip away.

"Why'd you say...?" Ephraim finally asks, stopping her before she can get more than a step.

Anise twitches an impatient shrug. "Just felt like it. It's nothing."

"But what do you _want_?"

"Said it's nothing. Don't make a fuss."

"They're gonna wonder, when there are no lice," Ephraim points out.

Anise waves this off just as if her brain isn't circling around this same thought. "They'll probably forget all about it tomorrow," she counters flippantly, because deception is a skill she _has_ mastered.

 

"How long's it take lice to hatch?" Anise overhears Harlan asking one of his cronies three days later.

It isn't a good sign. So far, her best plan involves playing innocent. It's not her fault if she got bad eggs, right? She thinks maybe she could sell that, but it leaves Ephraim right back where he was. Not that what happens to anybody else is her concern, of course.

Anise is still working on a better plan when Harlan intercepts her in the hall, his ever-present gang behind him—except this time, Ephraim is right there among them. Even before anyone says a word, Anise's belly lurches with foreboding.

"What's going on?" she says casually, but she's looking hard at Ephraim.

He looks right back at her, not a trace of shame on his face. "Gotta take care of myself," he tells her lightly.

"Little bird tells me you're a dirty, lying whore," Harlan declares. "We're gonna have to do something about that."

Later, Anise will remember something striking her behind the knee and bringing her down, and a foot connecting with her head in a burst of agony and darkness. Somewhere in the haze that follows, she dimly remembers Ephraim leaning over her, saying, "Whatever it was you wanted, I'm not as stupid as you thought. I know everybody plays everybody else. That's all anybody ever does."

After that, there are maybe six months she doesn't remember at all. The next solid memory she can call to mind, both Harlan and Ephraim have disappeared nobody knows where, and she's got two extra blankets on her cot that nobody seems inclined to try to take from her.

The next time a sorry-assed wounded bird type comes along, she takes his dinner for herself, first thing. She's not a slow learner.

 

Like blackout zones, the orphanages of Sihnon are little pieces of Rim world right here in the Core. They are crowded, but not _overly_ so, because they have ways of keeping their numbers down. Some few of the children are adopted. Some others quietly disappear, sold by the more mercenary of their caretakers to one slaver or another. A precious few of the children, if they show an aptitude, are apprenticed out to learn trades. Once a year, a guild representative comes from the nearest Companion House to inspect the children. The loveliest and most graceful are chosen to come and be trained in the Companion arts.

Anise is a pretty child, but she's not graceful. She's loud and frenetic and grubby, and forever tripping over her own feet like a newborn foal. At the not-so-tender estimated age of twelve, she is already brash and rude to the matrons. Somewhere else she might be called precocious, but here she is simply trouble. Her days in this orphanage are numbered, and she's smart enough to know that.

Wei Ling wafts into Anise's life in a cloud of silks and subtle perfume and the delicate chiming of silver earrings. She is easily the shiniest and most beautiful thing Anise has ever encountered, and the idea of becoming like her is something Anise did not know she wanted until now. Anise stands as straight as she can in the presentation line and tries to look regal and composed.

Wei Ling inspects each child presented to her with a critical, if kindly, eye. She regards Anise thoughtfully for a moment, but dismisses her and turns to the next child. Anise feels a flush rising in her face at the insult, and she clenches her jaw so hard it hurts. But she still doesn't beg for scraps.

"Mistress." The slight, dark-eyed apprentice who stands eclipsed at Wei Ling's side, hovering deferentially at her elbow, is not much older than Anise herself. "Perhaps this one." She nods her head at Anise, her voice soft yet steady. Her eyes are demurely lowered, barely flickering up to gleam at Anise through the fringe of ink-black lashes.

Wei Ling turns back and tilts her head appraisingly at Anise again. "She has all the hallmarks of future beauty," Wei Ling allows. "But a Companion must also possess the right kind of spirit. There must be something comforting and welcoming in our energy." She delicately does not say that Anise lacks these things, but the implication is plain.

Anise does not unclench her jaw to say anything to that, though she has to hold her breath and bite down until her temples ache to keep quiet. Better to go with them than the slavers, and her accent and attitude will be no help with that at all. Anise isn't stupid; she doesn't need the glowering matron kicking her ankle warningly to tell her _that_.

"As you say, Mistress," the apprentice concedes with a bob of her head that makes soft curls whisper over the silk of her dress. "But there is something about this one. Something striking. If she were properly trained, might her spirit not flourish and develop the proper energy?"

"In my experience, these things cannot be fostered where the seed does not already exist." Wei Ling smiles at her apprentice a little, a touch of indulgent fondness about the curve of her artfully painted mouth. "But if you feel that you truly see something in her, Inara, we can add her to our list."

Inara bows very slightly at this. "I am honored by your faith in my judgment, Mistress. I hope to be worthy of it."

Wei Ling laughs—a lovely, musical, cascading thing—and links her arm affectionately through Inara's. They stroll further down the line of children together, and Anise breathes again.

Inara looks back over her shoulder once, dark eyes meeting Anise's squarely for the first time. _Thank you_, Anise mouths at her silently. Inara smiles, and Anise has never even imagined seeing anything so fine.

 

Companion training is mostly enjoyable for Anise, if difficult. Endless dancing and deportment lessons at last purge the awkwardness from her body, even after she starts gaining height and curves. Speech lessons scour her backstreet accent away as if it never was.

No amount of lessons change who she is, though. Anise is still very much less interested in what her future clients want than in what _she_ wants herself. When she takes Intimacy 301—known privately to trainees as "Vanilla Virgins", because it's the first class trainee Companions take in basic applied sexual technique—she's hard pressed not to laugh at her partners as she reduces them to quivering flesh. She loves the rush of _power_ she feels, and it's just so _funny_, these practice partners thinking _they're_ showing _her_ something, thinking _they're_ in control here.

Anise is a little old for it, but if she passes her final training house trials, she'll spend a year apprenticed to a full-fledged Companion before she herself earns full status.

She already knows whom she wants to be apprenticed to.

True, she has not seen Inara Serra up close since that first time. Inara hasn't been assigned to train since Anise has been at the Academy, and, until Anise passes her test and joins one of the houses, she doesn't mix with the regular Companions. She's thought about sending Inara some message, but she can't think of anything to say that doesn't sound awkward and clumsy. Better to wait until she's in House Madrassa herself, until she can just ask Inara formally to take her on as an apprentice.

Anise tells herself that it isn't important, not really, that Inara Serra is just a woman and not some kind of goddess or rescuing angel. If she falls quiet and hangs on every word when Inara's name comes up in Academy gossip, well, that's just coincidence. She doesn't have a _thing_ about Inara, and she only wants to be apprenticed to her because if she's got to spend a year at someone's knee, it may as well be the nicest knee she can find. It isn't like she repeats Inara's name to herself when she's trying to drift to sleep—well, no more than a few repetitions, anyway. And if it's Inara she imagines in her Intimacy 301 sessions when she's trying to make herself fall, that's no one's rutting business.

So it isn't like Anise's heart stutters when Inara is assigned as impartial judge for her class' final test. It isn't as if she's _nervous_. Imagine, a girl like her, a Companion-to-be, nervous about sex. It's ridiculous. If her belly feels fluttery and unsettled the day testing begins, the fault clearly lies with the dumplings she bought from a street vendor the day before.

The first few days of testing are easy enough, though. She dances, serves tea, demonstrates her calligraphy, plays the lap-harp, sings, arranges flowers, carries on all kinds of conversations with all manner of people, and flirts in so many different ways and situations that she loses track. She knows Inara must be watching, and it adds a spice to everything, especially once the tests turn more intimate. There's a full day spent on massage, an afternoon on verbal enticement and encouragement, a morning on kissing, another day on touches, and two full days on different kinds of sexing. Anise feels a little uncertain about her score on the kissing portion—she's always a bit twitchy about kissing, because there's just something _personal_ about it that feels far more vulnerable than she's comfortable with—but she's pretty sure she got high marks on the verbal part.

On the last day, there's a mock client appointment with the tester, all the way from a welcoming tea ceremony to a graceful parting. It's the final hurdle, and Anise feels more than ever like she might be ill, but somehow in a sort of _good_ way. It makes no sense at all to her.

When she opens the door of the sumptuously appointed testing suite for Inara, there's a moment when Anise can't breathe. She remembers Inara the girl as impossibly beautiful, and she's been sure all these years that her memory has been exaggerating. Looking at Inara the woman, confident, radiant, possessed of a dignified grace, Anise thinks her memory is more faithful than she'd ever believed.

Inara smiles, and it is still the finest thing Anise can imagine.

Anise is impressed that Inara does not betray recognition; she thinks Inara must have been prepared for the shock beforehand. But even prepared though she was herself, Anise still feels like her center of gravity is a bit off somehow.

"Please, come in," Anise chokes out finally, groping for her self-possession. "Will you sit?" She gestures to the pile of cushions around the low table where she's laid out tea.

"Thank you," Inara says, inclining her head. She settles herself gracefully, her dark eyes watching Anise try to do the same without falling over herself as she hasn't done in years.

The tea ceremony is an _agony_. The words are there, of course—stylized ritual so familiar that Anise can dredge it up in her sleep—but she knows her delivery is more awkward than it should be, and coy glances at Inara's mouth and delicate fingers would be fine, but the blatant, hungry staring she's doing is too coarse, too obvious. But the silk wrap skirt Inara is wearing rides low on her hips while the sweep of her blouse falls a few inches above it. That strip of smooth, bare skin between pulls at Anise like gravity, and she loses her train of thought every time her eyes slide down to it. She can almost feel how the muscles would flutter and flex under her tongue if she licked Inara just there, and her tongue seems too big for her mouth every time she imagines it.

There's supposed to be a long, slow build here so that Anise can show off all the skills she's learned; it should be a couple of hours before she can taste that skin. Her mouth is already watering for it. She tells herself she can wait, she _can_, she's better than this, she's not some inexperienced, wide-eyed girl.

And that's when Anise snaps.

"Ritual's fine for people who need it to tell them what they want," she says abruptly, leaning forward across the table toward Inara. "But you and I, we don't need that, do we?"

Inara's lips quirk ever so slightly. "Do we not?" she murmurs.

"I _know_ you," Anise declares triumphantly. Thinking that this session may well be being recorded or observed, she realizes that she shouldn't reference their connection directly lest she invalidate the test, so she qualifies quickly, "I can see your heart in your smile and your soul in your eyes. Your skin is crying out for me." It's corny and clumsy, and she _knows_ it, but her brain seems to be jammed and it's the best she can do. She leans even further across the table, one elbow planted thoughtlessly on it in a way that her etiquette trainer would have called barbaric, and dares to reach out. Her fingertips brush the inside of Inara's wrist, delicately tracing the veins beneath the soft skin, and trail down to Inara's palm, where she strokes lightly at the clusters of sensitive nerves at its center. Inara does not shiver or make a sound, but Anise can feel the pulse beneath her touch quicken.

"I don't need to tumble you down on the floor and spread you open to know what you want," Anise husks. "But I'm going to anyway." She's trained well enough to see the slight rounding of Inara's eyes that means surprise and the catch in her breath that spells arousal, as quick and slight as they are. Surely Inara's reactions are not artifice, surely it's a genuine response. Surely Inara wants this as much as she does. All Anise can think of is pushing Inara down and getting a hand under her skirt, running it up between her legs and pressing fingers inside her to see if she's honestly wet and open and wanting, to know for _sure_ that this is real and not the facsimile of passion they play out for clients. The tips of Anise's fingers itch desperately with that desire.

"And what do I want?" Inara asks softly, her tone still light and neutral.

Anise leans even farther forward, half lying across the table now. "To stop waiting for this," she whispers, and _lunges_.

Anise's hand catches behind Inara's head, tangling in her hair, cupping the curve of her skull and pulling insistently. Inara makes the slightest of gasps as Anise's lips capture hers firmly. It's rougher than Anise intends, and she can't seem to stop herself from pushing into Inara's mouth again and again with her tongue. It's sloppy and artless, and a thousand times more natural and intimate than anything she's done in all her training. For all that everyone knows she doesn't like kissing, she likes _this_.

It isn't easy, but Anise manages to maneuver herself across the table without letting go of the kiss. As soon as she doesn't need her other arm to support herself, she curls it just between Inara's neck and shoulder, thumb stroking along the fine line of Inara's collarbone. It's good leverage to press Inara back and down until she's lying on the floor with Anise straddling her. If there's a hint of hesitation in the way Inara yields to the push, it's tiny, and Anise dismisses it in her own urgency. A small, distant part of Anise's mind tries to tell her that she should at least take Inara to the expansive bed in the other room, but that seems miles away and she just _can't_.

Anise only manages to tear her lips away from Inara's in favor of sucking bites down the slope of her throat. She latches on just below Inara's ear and sucks hard enough to raise a mark, pining Inara down to the ground with a firm hand when this makes her squirm restlessly.

"You shouldn't..." Inara starts in a whisper.

"I don't _care_," Anise hisses against the skin of her neck fiercely. And she doesn't; she wants to leave marks all over Inara, memories painted on the canvas of that perfect skin. She's only half aware that her hips are grinding down eagerly against Inara's pubic bone, and even less aware of the stifled moans she's making in time to those thrusts.

Without lifting her face from Inara's neck, it's hard to fumble for the fastenings of her blouse, but Anise tries it anyway. The frogs are tight, and she tugs at them so impatiently that she can feel at least one of them come loose in her hasty hands. If Inara notices, she doesn't complain. It's too much trouble to get the blouse all the way off, so Anise abandons it halfway just as soon as she can reach Inara's breasts and scoop them out so that the frame of the blouse pushes them high and close together.

"I dreamed about this," she confesses in a hoarse whisper, without meaning to. That vulnerability makes her gut lurch, and she pauses for just a moment. Her eyes flick up to Inara's face in time to catch a slight frown that dissolves when she drags her thumbnails over Inara's nipples. Inara shudders and arches, eyelids fluttering shut, just as Anise always imagined she would. When Anise sucks one of those nipples into her mouth and worries it with her tongue and teeth, Inara gasps just like Anise imagined she would, too.

Almost independently of her conscious mind, one of Anise's hands snakes under Inara's skirt and traces the shifting muscles of her thigh up to curve around the hollow of a hip. Inara's flesh is even warmer there, and her pulse thunders perceptibly under Anise's touch.

"I want," Anise chokes, without knowing what she's trying to say.

"Yes," Inara breathes, so softly that Anise isn't entirely sure she heard it at all.

And that's all the waiting Anise can take. She shifts to one side to make room, her hand sliding from Inara's hip to urge her legs apart. She doesn't tease or even explore, though she'd dearly like to someday; instead her fingers go hunting for slick wetness right off, burrowing between soft folds to push inside Inara without preamble. Inara stiffens just a little and tightens around Anise's fingers as they slide inside her in a way that makes both of them gasp.

It's giddy and overwhelming and _triumphant_ to feel Inara's slippery arousal all over her hand, just as undeniably real and true as Anise had hoped. "_Mine_," Anise growls lowly, meaning that it makes no difference how many others have touched Inara like this, because none of them _mattered_ any more than those who touched Anise herself did. She finds herself feverishly repeating, "So wet for me," over and over, occasionally dropping in words like _perfect_ and _beautiful_ and _goddess_. She wants to be embarrassed by that, but she just can't manage it.

She thrusts her fingers hard and deep, crooking them to rub against Inara's forward wall. Inara doesn't buck, but the way her hips swivel back to open herself more fully is just as telling. Anise pants for breath and hastily fumbles with Inara's skirt to ruck it all the way up around her waist. She rolls herself between Inara's legs, which hook readily over her shoulders, and dives down to replace her fingers with her tongue, spearing it as deep into Inara as it can go.

Inara tastes of salt and a slight honeyed sweetness that's almost reminiscent of mangoes, and even though Anise knows that all Companions follow a diet that makes them taste sweeter, it still seems special and wondrous now. She breathes deeply of the scent of Inara's juices and wriggles her tongue in curls and twists while her slicked fingers pluck at Inara's clit and carefully swirl over the sensitive underside. The one hand she still has free strains up blindly to cup one of Inara's breasts and pinch at the nipple.

Inara gives a soft cry that's almost just a loud exhalation, but she keeps doing it on every breath with increasing pitch. Anise can feel a slight trembling in the thighs that lie over her shoulders, and on her tongue blooms the faintest flavor of something sharp, like ozone. _Like tasting lightning_, Anise thinks to herself dizzily. Inara's heels dig into Anise's back just a little, the soft soles of her shoes rasping against the lace of Anise's dress. Almost laughing with euphoric anticipation, Anise pumps her tongue in and out faster, undulating it like a frenzied snake and strumming the tip of it over and over the tiny bundle of nerves inside Inara.

"_Renci de fozu_," Inara mutters and then falls quiet, one of her hands darting down to Anise's head, sliding over her cheek to fist in her hair. That's all the warning she gives before her hips finally buck up once and stay arched off the ground and shuddering, grinding herself against Anise in tiny, stuttering jerks. Anise hums with victory and satisfaction, still lapping at Inara for long, sweet moments until her hips finally subside back to the floor. Anise pulls back far enough to drop a small, sucking kiss to Inara's swollen clit, delighting in the shiver and hiss that this produces. With a lingering lick that trails all the way through short-cropped hairs to the soft curve of Inara's belly, Anise finally lifts her head. Her face almost aches from the grin that stretches her mouth.

"I promise to make it to the bed before I try any of the other things I want to do to you," Anise laughs. "You deserve silk sheets." She strokes her fingers lightly over the lush swell of Inara's breast, her edge of urgency momentarily eased, the ache of _wanting_ wonderfully transmuted into the glory of _having_. There's no room left for practical considerations, and if anyone's watching, Anise still can't bring herself to give a damn.

"Thank you," Inara says quietly in a tone that Anise can't decipher, and her hand drifts down to her belly to lace her fingers with Anise's for a moment. "But I'm afraid I can't stay," she says more loudly, with the exact blend of polite firmness and regret that all Companions are taught, releasing her clasp to pull her hand away.

"What?" Anise demands, more sharply than she means to. "We still have _hours_ left."

"I'm sorry, but we don't." Inara lifts up to her elbows, her face still flushed as she looks down the rumpled length of her torso at Anise. Her dark eyes are inscrutable, and something clenches painfully tight in Anise's chest. "The test is concluded," she says with horrifying gentleness.

Anise has to swallow hard a few times before she can be sure she's not going to scream or vomit or cry. "Of course," she rasps past the tightness in her throat. She pulls hastily away from Inara, scrambling back and up onto her feet, rubbing the stickiness from her mouth and fingers almost violently on the sleeve of her dress. "I don't mean to keep you." Except she _did_, she'd meant exactly that, and she's disgusted by her own naïveté. "Let me show you to the door," she offers tightly, because Anise _still_ does not beg for scraps.

At the door, Inara turns. Her fingertips whisper across the small of Anise's back so briefly it's almost imperceptible. "Truly," she murmurs. "You're like no one I've ever tested before."

Anise's heart stumbles uncertainly in her chest, not sure what to make of that.

"I have enjoyed meeting you," Inara adds, her eyes sincere and empty of hidden meanings.

And that is when Anise knows with a sudden sureness that is cold and angry that Inara never recognized her at all; Inara doesn't remember, hasn't been thinking of her all this time.

"It feels like I've known you for years," Anise answers, as close as her pride will let her get to a hint. Of _course_ she's changed and grown a lot over the intervening years, but surely their first meeting was memorable enough to mitigate that. Surely Inara must know her.

But no recognition dawns in Inara's eyes.

Inara gives a small, gracious smile. "For someone with such a warm heart, it must seem that way sometimes," she offers, a vague kindness that rankles at Anise coloring her tone. And with a courteous nod of her head, she slips out the door and is gone, leaving the room colder than it should possibly be.

 

Anise still feels numb and detached by the next morning, when she receives notification of her scores. She's actually surprised by how much she _isn't_ surprised to find that she's washed out. The official letter is very diplomatic and uninformative, but when she hacks into the database, she finds the raw notations Inara entered, and they're far more candid.

_Enthusiastic and full of passion, but too caught up in her own desires_, the notes say. _Her focus is all internal, and she has no self-control. It's almost as though she's playing the client herself, which fits with the impression of self-centeredness some of her previous instructors have of her. Although her ardor is remarkably infectious, she seems to be unable to maintain any professional distance_.

Anise is half-tempted to go to the training master responsible for her class and appeal the ruling on the grounds that she wouldn't have been like that with anyone else in the 'verse. Give her a stranger, and she can show them she has _plenty_ of rutting control and _miles_ of distance.

But she cannot imagine confessing her weakness to anyone, ever. It's too galling to be so vulnerable. Bad enough that she _has_ a weakness in the first place. It's all Inara's fault, Inara who tore away her discipline, Inara who stripped her more naked than she thought she had it in her to be, Inara who apparently didn't even _remember_ her.

When the Guild expels her with little more than a bag of clothes and her lap-harp, it actually would be pretty easy for her to get a decent job. Failed trainee Companions often go on to careers in the performing arts, mediation, or therapy, among others. It's not as if much of her training couldn't apply perfectly well to some other field, and the Guild even offers Anise job placement assistance to help her find her way in the world.

Alternatively, it would even be easy to fade back into the streets where she was born. It would be easy to become Honey, if Anise hated herself that much, which she almost does.

There are plenty of easy options waiting for her outside the Guild. But Anise is many things, and easy has never been one of them.

 

Five years, six worlds, dozens of schemes, innumerable names, and two faces later, it is still Inara whom Anise—now Saffron—imagines to make herself fall. No other partner's face, no matter how beautiful, can ever quite eclipse Inara's. Time has not muted the bitter anger, but it hasn't eroded the wanting, either.

Eventually, there comes a time when Saffron gets tired of pretending to forget and decides to find a little closure. The 'verse is a big place, but Companions are easy to track when they're working; their arrivals and departures are publicly documented on every world where they advertise for clients. It doesn't take long to connect Inara to a ship, and then it's just a matter of catching up to that ship's somewhat irregular itinerary.

"_Serenity_?" a scruffy postmaster named Hamid repeats, furrowing his brow thoughtfully. "You just missed her. Passed through maybe six hours ago. Headed for Triumph, I think they said."

By the time that rattletrap Firefly turns up on Triumph, Saffron's already insinuated herself with the locals. It's a tremendously tedious and annoying few days of waiting, and Saffron would never waste her time on such a pointless, impoverished, backwater world if she were only looking for a good ship to score. She's just in the mood for blood when they finally turn up.

That evening at the celebration, it's obvious to Saffron's eye that the big one is the easiest target to get herself onboard, but the laughing Captain is the one Inara smiles at, and that settles it.

_You'll remember me this time_, Saffron promises in the seething quiet of her own head, watching Inara take the Captain's arm and gritting her teeth so hard the tightness in her jaw makes her head ache. _I'll tear you down like you did me, and you'll _remember_ until the net fries you._

And when she has the chance, even though it would be convenient to knock Inara out with a goodnight kiss and take her shuttle, even though she desperately wants to and hates herself for it, Saffron doesn't kiss Inara.

She's not a slow learner, after all.


End file.
